Wacom’s Inkling turns pen and paper sketches into digital artwork

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Wacom is very well known in the field of digital art peripherals. Not only does the company offer up a wide range of pen tablets, but it also created the Cintiq, an interactive pen display artists can draw on directly just like a sheet of paper.

Wacom’s latest product has the potential to both revolutionize and open up digital sketching to a wider audience by allowing you to draw on any sheet of paper while still managing to capture a digital version of your pen strokes.

It is called the Inkling and takes the form of a self-contained kit consisting of a receiver and a pen. The receiver clips on to the edge of the paper you intend to draw on and maintains a link to the pen using an ultrasonic and infrared link. As the user draws, the receiver records the strokes being made to form an image, meaning you end up with both the hard copy from the ink cartridge the pen contains as well as the digital version the receiver records. The pen has 1024 levels of pressure which also get recorded.

The Inkling works with paper up to A4 in size with the only limitation being a 2cm dead zone around the receiver. No limitation exists on the type of paper used meaning you can attach the Inkling to a sketchbook, single sheet, or any old scrap of paper you like. There’s also a button on the receiver that allows the addition of new layers, a feature used extensively in applications such as Adobe Photoshop.

Both the receiver and the pen have rechargeable batteries that are charged over USB when sitting inside the Inkling storage case. A full charge takes 3 hours and gives the user 8 hours of drawing time.

Once a drawing or drawings are complete the included Sketch Manager Software allows you to export them to Photoshop, Illustrator, or Autodesk Sketchbook directly as vector images. Alternatively you can save them out in BMP, JPG, PDF, PNG, SVG, or TIFF formats. Just like with charging, the image transfer is handled over a USB connection when the receiver is in the storage case.

Considering what the Inkling allows you to do the $199 price tag doesn’t seem at all high to me. If you want one, you only have to wait until the middle of September when Wacom expects to have stock available.